


corpus vile

by houfukuseisaku



Category: Evillious Chronicles
Genre: headcanon to explain wherest the fuck the court end crew ends up in a reset evichro
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-14
Updated: 2019-09-14
Packaged: 2020-10-18 10:03:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,861
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20637353
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/houfukuseisaku/pseuds/houfukuseisaku
Summary: corpus vile, lit.worthless bodyA person or thing fit only to be the object of an experiment, as in the phrase 'Fiat experimentum in corpore vili.'Four souls in one body is three souls too many.“I want a child.”





	corpus vile

Four souls in one body is _three souls too many_.

Especially when it means five voices besides her own, mixing and turning to mud in her head.

The twin gods she calls her parents, she recognizes, with their half-truths and half-lies so expertly woven together that she can barely begin to pull the words apart.

The moonlit boy and the starlit girl, she has an inkling of, though the memories are as fleeting as bubbles, threatening to burst every time she tries to remember.

The last one is a mystery wrapped in an enigma. It is a man’s voice, and it’s paradoxically comforting in its familiar unfamiliarity, the way he, too, treats her as a stranger.

But six distinct existences, five voices not her own, four separate souls, three unknown anomalies and two malicious gods, sharing one single human body, _her_ body?

_Entirely too much._

So, when the last council of the day is adjourned and the Senate leaves her to her own devices, Queen Alice retires to her chambers, moving to stand in front of her vanity mirror. The glass, polished to shining, reflects her own haggard face back at her, bruises purpling under her eyes from lack of sleep, worry lines etching themselves into her skin, her lips drawn in a frown that never seems to leave her nowadays.

Alice sighs, squeezes her eyes shut, and drags both hands over her face. When she opens her eyes again, they’re all there, reflected in the glass along with her.

The dragon gods are easy to pick out, the way they’re draped over her shoulders like a pair of snakes curling around reluctantly shared prey. Wisps of gold and blue blink in and out of her vision, and they take the opportunity of her attention to shriek demands in her ears.

She immediately tunes them out with all the ease of an oft-practiced bad habit, their voices rendered nothing more than white noise to her cotton-filled head. They have their claws sunk deep into her flesh, it’s not like she can escape them save for this momentary respite. She can afford to ignore them for a few moments.

Subtle movement draws her eyes somewhere else, and she turns her focus to the seekers of the sky; what she calls the moonlit boy and starlit girl in lieu of whatever names they have, if they even have any names to speak of. They stand slightly in front of her, hands linked together as always, shifting colours in ways that make her eyes water.

Sometimes they are as gold and blue as the twin gods. Sometimes they aren’t.

She prefers the times when they aren’t.

Not once have they ever spoken a word to her, and for that she is grateful.

But they _cry_. Sometimes, on the verge of sleep, when she treads the line between dreams and reality, she hears them, their quiet tears. She has to strain to hear them, especially if the twin gods are vying for her attention in that moment, but she hears them, nonetheless. Promises of a better life, of regrets, of wishes made and wishes left unfulfilled.

The forest is a recurring topic between those two, and she feels their longing whenever she overhears their promises to each other, how one day the moon and the stars will finally return to the forest below the southern sky.

The Millennium Tree Forest is a recurring topic between them.

And poison is another.

The way both the boy and the girl so easily refer to themselves and each other as poison, as venom, as _rotten forbidden fruits_ disguised as a godsent gift, it shakes her to the core. But they never say a word to her, and she can’t bring herself to ask them. Even if it’s her body in which they reside, it’s not her place to pry.

An awkward cough jolts her from her thoughts. She blinks, and the sky-seekers are now hiding behind the last one, the man with dark hair and dark eyes and a tiredness in his expression that seems to mirror her own.

“Good evening,” she says, after the silence has grown too suffocating to bear.

“Good evening,” he answers, and then continues, “is something wrong? You haven’t looked in the glass this long since the first time.”

* * *

(The first time.)

(The first time they spoke to each other, through the mirror, she’d been so relieved. She thought she would finally get answers.)

(He refused to tell her anything. He refused to say anything, after she asked. Only gave her that insufferably unreadable smile of his, until she gave in and looked away and when she looked back, he was gone.)

(She never asked again, after that.)

* * *

“I… I’m sorry, for what I’m about to do—” she starts, and then stops, because her door’s opening and who else but Seth Twiright steps through the doorway, that insufferably unreadable smile of his curled on his lips, the bespectacled man looking for all the world like a cat that’s got the cream.

“You called for me, Your Majesty?” Seth murmurs, and she hates how his voice carries through her room despite its softness, like the hissing of a snake ready to strike. She hates him, hates that she cannot trust him, knows not to trust him, and yet exactly because he cannot be trusted is why she’s called for him.

“I have,” she takes a step towards him, falters, shakes her head to clear out the cobwebs of hesitation, “I have a request to make.”

She doesn’t miss the rise of his eyebrows, how his smile just barely skirts the edge of a smirk.

“And what, exactly,” he holds a hand up to his chin, fingers curling in front of his lips, tilting his head slightly to the side, “would that request entail?”

“I want a child.”

It takes her a second to realize how her words can be taken, and blushes to the tips of her ears when Seth lets out a hearty laugh.

“There are far better candidates than me to father your child, surely?” He teases, eyes gleaming. She parts her lips to hastily correct her mistake, but he cuts her off before she can, expression smoothing into something decidedly less accommodating, less warm. Less human. “But I think I understand what it is you want.”

Her breath sticks in her throat, sticky and syrupy-sweet. “What is it that I truly want?”

“You want,” when did he get so close? His mouth is practically next to her ear, his whispers slithering into her head like a snake burrowing into the earth, “some _peace and quiet_, don’t you?”

Abruptly, he rears back, the picture-perfect mask of a subservient scientist once more. “Easily done, Your Majesty. I have just the thing in mind.”

* * *

The very next day, she has a child by her side, and one less voice in her head.

Seth had called it—him, a _thing_. A failed experiment. And she’d agreed to it, to pull the soul out of her body and shove it into an empty container, even if the container was—is a child. A ghoul child, one of many of Seth’s abominable creations, but still a _child_ nonetheless.

She feels sick to her stomach.

She feels sicker still when, as she escorts the child—her child—Adam Moonlit out of the laboratory, a girl with brown hair and brown eyes entirely too similar to Seth’s own screams out for her to stop, begs her to not take away her friend.

She takes Adam away nonetheless.

Not even a week passes before the Senate decides to take Adam away from her, collectively claiming that a child, even if adopted, will only distract her from her duties to the gods and her country. But they are merciful, and they will let him live, and perhaps if he proves himself useful to the gods and her country, he can one day reunite with her.

She knows better. She’ll probably never see him again.

* * *

“I want a child.”

His lips are still set in that insufferably unreadable smile, but this time, there’s a hint of disdain in the gleam of his eyes, in the clipped tone of his words.

“_Another_ one? Easily done, Your Majesty, but this is being a drain on my resources—"

“Let me finish,” she snaps, enjoying the flicker of surprise that passes over Seth’s face like a short-lived cloud in a spotless blue sky. “I want a child of _my own flesh and blood_. None of your inhumane,” and here her face pinches, scrambling for an appropriate word to say, “_experiments_. Surely you can do something like that,” something like a challenge slips into her voice, “right?”

He goes quiet, scrutinizing her with cold eyes. Finally, he answers, “…That can certainly be arranged. But it will result in twins, and you know the Senate will object to them, even if they are of virgin birth.”

“I am the Queen and the Prophet of this god-descended country! They cannot deny _my_ children of their birthright—”

“You know full well that you’re nothing more than a puppet ruler, Maria.” Seth retorts, but she can see the gears turning in his head. He wants this as much as she does, wants to know what he can _do_ with the extent of his knowledge on artificial humans. The experiments cannot end just yet. “But I can strike you a deal.”

“What?” She’s getting greedy now, she wants them _out_ of her head, their poisonous, venomous hatred and sorrow _gone_. Without the man of dark hair and dark eyes to keep her in check, the twin gods’ bloodlust and the sky-seekers cries are that much more unbearable. “What is it that you want?”

“The children.” His request steals the breath from her lungs; she has to grip the edge of her vanity table to stop herself from toppling to the floor. “I give you twins, give you some _peace and quiet_, and you will give them back to me in return.”

“Fine,” she snarls, baring her teeth, “fine! As long as you promise to take good care of them. And after they’re born, I get one day with them, one night at the very least!”

“Oh, I definitely will,” he purrs, smug as a snake, and gestures to the door, “now, shall we go?”

* * *

She knows better. She knows he’ll treat them as nothing more than test subjects for his sick experiments, she doesn’t trust him and that’s why she lets him believe that she’ll give him her precious children.

Nine months later, she’s alone now, in her private gardens, the seconds eating away at her one night with her precious twin babies. She kneels by the riverbank, cradling them to her chest, grinning at the thought of outsmarting the smartest man in the whole country.

The sorrow of the sky-seekers is gone from her head, now, and she’s free to love her precious Adam and Eve without their poisonous venom rotting her from the inside out.

“I’ll find you again, I promise,” she cries; the twins are crying too, even as she carefully nestles them in a basket, weaving a spell over it to protect them from harm. “Don’t worry, when everything’s over, when the twin dragon gods raze this damned country to the ground, I’ll definitely come and find you, and we can be a happy family in the forest, just like you wanted.”

She laughs, and laughs, and laughs, and doesn’t hear the footsteps approaching her until it’s too late. A pair of hands grab the basket’s handle, and panic overrides her glee. She turns around to see Seth, none-too-happy to see her and her plan almost coming to fruition.

“Thought so, you _witch_,” he jeers, pulling harder, but by some miracle or mockery of fate, he isn’t strong enough to pull the basket out of her arms. “Give them to me!”

“No!” She screams, hysterical. “I won’t let you use them!”

He whips his head around, eyes narrowing. “Keep it down, or else someone will hear and _neither_ of us will get to keep them!”

“I don’t care! Even the Senate will take better care of them than you will, you _demon_!”

Something in him snaps at her words. Wordlessly, he goes from tugging at the basket to snatching one of the twins out of it. The momentum leaves her stumbling backwards; the basket and the remaining baby falls into the river, the rapid currents immediately carrying it away.

“No, Eve!” Alice screams, then turns to Seth, who’s already leaving her behind. “Give Adam back to me, demon! Give my son back to me!”

“Adam?” He scoffs, glancing over his shoulder; she shudders at the ice in his eyes. “Tsk, you’ve replaced _him_ with this child already? Come, my creation,” nuzzling the baby’s cheek with his nose, he smiles, far gentler than she’s ever seen him, than he has any right to be, “let’s get away from this _witch_, shall we? Amostia.” And then he’s gone.

Her attendants find her an hour later, still screaming.

* * *

Four souls in one body is three souls too many.

But now, one soul in one body feels like _not enough_.

There’s no more sadness, no more sorrow. The man with the dark hair and dark eyes is _gone_, the moonlit boy and the starlit girl are _gone_, and now there’s only an overflowing wrath, both hers and the twin gods, turning and mixing into mud. No peace and quiet to be found.

She screams, pounding her fists against the glass of her vanity mirror. She’s locked in her room, her arms and legs bound by shackles stained red and blue, more of a prisoner than a sovereign; the Senate had given up on her, she’s gone stark raving mad they say, and now she truly is useless, nothing more than a figurehead used to run her country without her input.

She screams, the twin gods screaming in her head along with her.

She doesn’t know how long she’s been screaming, but she hears the door opening and suddenly Seth is there in front of her, and somewhere along the way she’s stopped screaming and so have the twin gods and all she can hear is his voice.

“I want a child.”

She looks at him like he’s grown a second head. Ha, a two-headed one-eyed snake, wouldn’t that be funny. But Seth stares at her, cold and calculating and expecting an answer.

“Give me back my children and _maybe_ I’ll think about giving you a child,” she sneers, barely suppressing the urge to spit on his glasses.

He sighs, tired and far more human than she’s ever seen him, far more human than he ever deserves to be, demon in a human’s skin that he is. “I’m afraid I cannot give them back to you, Your Majesty,” he explains, “for Amostia is far too destructive for his own good and if he were to leave Lunaca Labora, I can’t guarantee that Evillious won’t be destroyed.”

She hums, bored of his explanation four words in. “Then let this Hell called Evillious be destroyed,” she’s so, so bored and tired of whatever game or trick he wants to play, has half a mind to tune him out like she did the twin dragon gods a long time ago, except now their desires and hers are so intertwined that it’s hard to figure out which thoughts are theirs and which thoughts are her own.

“As for the one you called Eve, I’ve heard of the Pantheon’s head priestess saving a baby from the river,” he continues on as if she hadn’t said anything, “and it would be far too troublesome to take her back. Her name is Elluka Chirclatia now, Your Majesty. Adam Moonlit himself is doing a fine job climbing the ranks of the Research Institute, he’ll likely become the Head Scientist of Project Ma; you should be proud of him.”

“How _nice_,” she tonelessly drones, “so I can’t have any of my children back and you expect me to pop out another.”

The smirk that curls his lips should set off warning bells in her head, but at this point she can’t be bothered to care. He’s already taken away everything from her; there’s nothing left for him to use as a bargaining chip to hold over her head.

“I’m not giving birth to another child just for you to experiment on,” she declares with finality, pulling her eyes shut, “so leave me be and let me rest in peace and quiet, _demon_.”

“You misunderstand, Maria,” Seth hisses, and something about the way he says it makes her head go appallingly silent, “You’ve been a needless drain on my resources, and _the experiments cannot end_.”

At the sensation of fingers wrapping around her neck, her eyes fly open, and the first emotion she’s felt in a long time besides anger floods her gut: pure, primal fear.

“I want a child, and you want some _peace and quiet_, free from the screams of those mad twin dragon gods,” like a serpent coiled around its prey, Seth smiles and squeezes his hands, “_don’t you, Irina?_ ”

**Author's Note:**

> so yeah this is how i headcanon the court end crew ends up: gammon=adam, adam/eve=amostia/elluka, and marialice=irina, with gadammon as marialice's adopted ghoul child and adamostia/evelluka as her virgin birth irregular twins + my hc that meta and adam are failed irreg twins though i probably didnt make that clear in the fic, whoops
> 
> (flops over) cant wait for oss novel to wreck everything hahahahahaha --houfuku "feya" aerforce


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